Site Mobile Navigation

In France, a Bastion of Privilege No More

When Richard Descoings took over as director of the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris in 1996, students at the school, founded in 1871 and universally known as “Sciences Po,” looked like those at any other elite French institution.

“We were in the same situation as the Grandes Écoles,” Mr. Descoings said in a recent interview, referring to places like the École Normale Supérieure or the École Polytechnique, highly selective pinnacles of the French higher education system. The director, 53, had once been a student there himself, following a well-worn, if demanding, path from private school to the “prépas” — two years of classes designed solely to prepare a student for the “concours,” the rigorous exam that governs entry to the most selective schools — then to Sciences Po and afterward the famed École Nationale d’Administration, or ENA, whose graduates have long formed the top tier of French public life. A high-flier, Mr. Descoings was appointed to the Conseil d’État, whose members advise government ministers and also serve as the country’s supreme court.

“The students who came to us were almost exclusively white, from affluent families located in big cities,” he said. “These were students whose parents and grandparents were university graduates. And in a country like France — a country with deep social differences between regions, between the city and the countryside, and between the social classes — this was a big problem.”

Ten years ago Mr. Descoings decided to do something about it.

“Richard saw the handwriting on the wall,” said Peter Gumbel, a former journalist who now heads the Center for the Americas at Sciences Po. “He realized very early on that we would have to find a way to wean ourselves from government funding in order to grow. And that we would have to grow to become more diverse. At the same time he blew up the admissions system.”

In place of the single route to entry, Sciences Po instituted a threefold admissions procedure: French candidates could take an entry exam in their final year of secondary school; international candidates, who at the time made up only a small proportion of the applicants, could submit a dossier including both school grades and scores on either national exams, such as the British A-levels, or standardized tests including the SAT in the United States. French students who achieved unusually high grades on their baccalauréat would also be admitted. Most controversially, Sciences Po approached 85 secondary schools in disadvantaged areas of France and agreed to accept their most able graduates regardless of exam results.

“We said, ‘Just send us your best students,’ and we’ll admit them and give them whatever financial aid they need in order to attend,” Mr. Gumbel said.

At the time the effort was announced, commentators in newspapers across the country assailed the program. While there were some who praised the changes, others called them an attack on a grand tradition that has produced world-class scholars. One writer in Le Figaro called the program an act of “political correctness” that embraced a failed American approach. Others called it a publicity stunt.

On Tuesday Mr. Descoings will release the school’s official reply to its critics: a specially commissioned study of the 10-year impact of the diversity initiative written by Vincent Tiberj, a sociologist who coordinates research methodology at Sciences Po.

But an early peek at the verdict on what its sponsors describe as “a French version of affirmative action” reveals a series of successes. From a student body where, in 2001, only 6 percent of students received any form of financial assistance, the most recent incoming class at Sciences Po now has 27 percent of students on scholarships — roughly double the percentage found at any of the top Grandes Écoles.

Mr. Descoings has also presided over a major expansion program, taking the school from its home campus on the Rue Saint-Guillaume to six new campuses outside Paris: Poitiers, for Spanish and Latin American studies; Dijon, which specializes in Eastern Europe; Le Havre for East Asian studies; Menton for Middle Eastern Studies; Nancy for Franco-German studies, and Reims for the study of North America and Britain. At the Reims campus the language of instruction is English. “Don’t tell the Minister of Culture,” he joked.

Photo

The entrance to the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, known as “Sciences Po.”Credit
Michael Kamber for The New York Times

As Mr. Gumbel points out, this expansion has occurred despite a ninefold rise in tuition over the same time period, from €1,050 to €9,500 for undergraduate fees in the current academic year. In 2004 alone tuition fees tripled, partly as a result of the school’s plan for greater financial independence but also as a consequence of what Mr. Descoings describes as “redistribution within the student body” whereby poorer students pay nothing while those whose family income exceeds €200,000 a year pay the full tuition.

“Such families may not be wealthy,” said Mr. Descoings, “but at least we can say that they are ‘at ease.’ ”

So how do the students admitted under the diversity initiative, who now make up 10 percent of each incoming class, fare once they reach Sciences Po? “The overwhelming majority keep up or catch up very quickly,” said Mr. Gumbel, adding that in contrast to the French university system as a whole, which admits anyone with a high school diploma but where as many as half the students fail to progress beyond their first year, the dropout rate at Sciences Po “is marginal.” On average at least 90 percent of students admitted under the initiative graduate after three years. After graduation 63 percent are in full-time employment — compared with a figure of 56 percent for Sciences Po as a whole.

“And these are genuine, long-term jobs, 90 percent of them in the private sector. Half of these graduates are earning more than €2,500 a month. That may not be high by American standards but it’s €300 a month more than the average for the rest of our graduates.”

Mr. Descoings credits the program’s success to a decision to search for “intellectual potential, rather than just performance on exams. Teachers are the best judge of that.” But he gives most of the credit to the students themselves. “Our challenge is mainly to persuade them that they are good enough to be here.”

Remedial classes are not needed, said Mr. Descoings, but the scholarship students are offered tutorial support to help them keep up with a much faster pace than they may have had in secondary school — and to “explain social and cultural codes.”

“If we have a young girl from a Muslim family, she may have been taught not to look a man in the eye unless he is a relative,” he said. “But in our culture someone who doesn’t look you right in the eye when speaking is considered devious.”

With 40 percent of the student body now coming from outside of France, Mr. Descoings and the institution he heads have embraced a future that looks very different from the world he grew up in — a world where “everybody’s children went to the same schools — as we say in France, education was a form of ‘social reproduction’ — these students did not have success given to them at birth. The world is very different when you have to win what you get.”

Some critics have complained that as a result of so many changes, the institution has lost its focus. Mr. Descoings replies that even in his day, only a minority of graduates went on to the careers in public service for which their education was supposedly designed. Besides, he said, if French universities were consistently ranked in the top 10, “or even in the top 50, you could argue that we don’t need to look at ourselves, or to change. But we are not in that situation.”

He continued: “In 2005 we had 10 days of riots here in France. When you think about that, and you look at what has been happening recently in England, you realize that if we do not open our best universities, if we do not open our private companies, if we do not open our political bodies to all our citizens, then the future of our nation is in danger.”

Unapologetic about the changes he has brought about, Mr. Descoings agreed with his critics on two points. To those who complain that the majority of classes at Sciences Po are no longer taught by academics, he replied: “We are proud of that. In sociology or humanities we need academics. But for classes in marketing or journalism or law students should encounter practitioners.”

As for those who say that by requiring all undergraduates to “practice an art” during their studies he is “Americanizing” a proud French institution, he replied: “Yes, if practicing an art is American, then in that sense we are becoming more American. We want our students be creative, to innovate. Sciences Po can’t afford to remain an institution offering old recipes for an old world.”